What Is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is a strategy used by websites to improve their ranking within the organic section of search engines such as Google, Bing, Yandex and more. This technique helps improve the discovery of content across the web increasing the number of visitors accessing a website for related keywords. SEO is a part of a search marketing of which website can connect with their target audience and deliver the most relevant content. Any search marketing activity will be about making yourself more visible within search engines to attract new and returning customers. As a primary objective of any SEO campaign, you need to deliver the information the searcher is looking for and this is often defined by the types of query they type into the search engine. Modern search engines are often very good at delivering relevant results to users and the websites who often appear more prominently in natural search results are those who meet the visitors expectations.
What are the SEO Basics?
Over the years search engines are continuously developing complex search algorithms to improve the way people discover websites and content and with over 250 signals and over 600 core algorithm changes, it is important that your website adapts to the ever changing search landscape.
Here are a few of the basics you should be considering for your SEO marketing strategy.
- Keyword Research— understanding the type of queries your customers are typing into a search engine and the intent behind their search. A comprehensive keyword research strategy will define the direction for you website and provide the foundations for your content.
- Link Profile – Your link profile is made up of all the websites which link back to your website via their content. Each link is classed as a vote by search engines that are then used to rank your content for more prominently within the search index. However, each backlink is not treated equally because search engines will use the authority and topic of the domain to assess how the beneficial the link should be for your websites rankings.
- Technical Optimisations – search engines use robots which visit and crawl the majority of webpages across the internet. These robots will crawl every website differently but will follow a variety of different methods to index and discover new content. Due to the technical and functional way in which pages are collected by the search engines you need to ensure that search engines can crawl and process the information hosted on your website.
- User Experience – we have found user experience to be a developing signal to help search engines interpret the accessibility and ease of use of your content. Engagement metrics such as dwell time, bounce rate and exit rates can determine how useful your content is to your audience.
- Mobile Optimisation – The evolution of the smartphone paved way for the mobile web. More people are using their mobile devices to discover and consume new content overtaking those of desktop queries. Search engines have since deployed mobile friendly algorithms which rate each of your webpages to determine if a searcher can easily engage with your content on a mobile device.
Setting A Solid SEO Foundation
SEO has long been considered a silted marketing channel with a core focus on technical website changes and adapting to irregular algorithm updates. The new SEO model is a part of the bigger picture to become a proactive and sustainable part of businesses marketing strategy.
Search marketing now needs to consider an overlap of the general marketing channels to incorporate elements content and social signals along side long standing algorithm signals such as link profiles which are known to impact ranking performance among other factors.
It is important make SEO the foundation of any marketing channel to deliver increase in traffic from head and long tails terms but also adapt to the changing display of Google search results. SEO today is a much larger proportion of the digital marketing spectrum that it used to be. BCL Marketing focuses on building an online brand whilst becoming an authoritative and trusted resource within your market to attract new customers.
The Need for a Sustainable SEO Strategy
Organisations can no longer afford to take the organic search channel for granted. A robust SEO strategy demands the same attention and budgets as your other marketing channels, therefore there is a need to create a viable long term solution to generate annual return on investment.
BCL Marketing believes SEO should be recognised as one of the top marketing channels and we have provided clients with the key strategic direction and optimisation techniques to deliver a unique SEO approach that works.
Traditional SEO was purely technical and results could be driven through SEO specialists alone in a silo. Today, SEO looks more like good marketing, and integration across a multitude of marketing functions is necessary to move the needle. This is why we consider ourselves a partner of our clients integrating our own teams into their businesses, providing research and strategy to guide and coordinate the efforts of marketing teams in order to capture valuable search benefits
What can we help with?
- Authority enhancement.
- Google penalty assessment/removal.
- Backlink audits and risk assessment.
- Technical audits and optimisation.
- Keyword analysis.
- Digital audience profiling and increased brand exposure.
How does it work?
We devise a robust SEO strategy that is designed to deliver performance improvements and significant commercial returns.
Using our proprietary software, we can complete a full audit of your existing content to identify opportunities and gaps, creating a complete content-led strategy that is focused on your audiences and business objectives.
This is supported by an expert technical strategy that ensures that your site is fully optimised for search and a distribution network that ensures that your message reaches exactly the right audiences.
Finally, but perhaps most crucially, we have built an extremely powerful database of websites/contacts and the tools to mine this data to rapidly pinpoint relevant sites to seed content.